the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Is freedom afraid of fire?

“So I don’t see the flag burning issue going away any time soon. Not unless they find a way to put education in the water like they do with fluoride.”
- from a comment at The Dilbert Blog

I’m not a big fan of Scott Adams. I certainly don’t read his flagship comic, Dilbert, but (since both Frank and Owen pointed it out) I came across his recent post on Congressional attempts to deal with the burning of our beloved United States flag. While Adams’ commentary is tinged with wit, the following paragraph was the one that really spoke to me:

It seems to me that the great thing about the flag is that it symbolizes something inherently indestructible: the concept of freedom. You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there – it’s stronger. I like that about my flag. I would go so far as to say it’s my flag’s best feature. (full text)

While he obviously opposes attempts to outlaw flag-burning, he also points out other societal problems we’ve yet to squelch, like “crime, drugs, war, poverty, terrorism, healthcare, immigration, and the mystery of why our children are such idiots compared to Norwegians.”

Anyway, to get back to my original thought, if you are viewing this during the week of July 4, you’ll notice a corresponding poll question in the sidebar. You feedback is appreciated.)

I can’t get even remotely excited over this issue. Ugh. It’s political and it gets trotted out every so often to get some shmoe re-elected. Blahblahblah, bored now.

I like the phrasing of the Adams’ quote.

Is burning the flag disrespectful? Absolutely. But when people burn the flag, my suspicion is they are more outraged at the failure to meet the ideals represented by the flag than those ideals themselves, and the outlawing of a measure of civil disobedience.

And, again mentioned in your post, there are many unsolved problems that are much more pressing (Damned Norwegians!) and the flag-burning issue seems like both outlier behavior and low-hanging fruit and it disappoints me that our legislators would pursue this over other problems.

[…] the smedley log :: Is freedom afraid of fire? “It seems to me that the great thing about the flag is that it symbolizes something inherently indestructible: the concept of freedom. You can burn the flag as many times as you want and the concept of freedom is not only still there – it’s stronger.” (tags: flag amendment constitution protest activism politics) […]